From the bookshelf: P. Hulova, Kurzer Abriss meines Lebens in der mongolischen Steppe (A short story of my life in the Mongolian steppe), Munich 2007

This book is actually not from my own bookshelf. I bought it as a desparate present for my mother when Christmas was approaching, and she had stated that she would like to go to Mongolia one day, too, so I thought giving a novel about Mongolian women was not the worst possible choice.

Petra Hůlová is a Czech author, just a few months older than me. She published the book  in Czech in 2002, which happens to be the year in which I made my first trip to Mongolia - in fact, the first time I travelled abroad on my own. I know I was very young back then, but then I was always quite of nerdy and we all know that girls grew up quicker. The cover text points out that Mrs. Hulova studied Mongolian and spent several months in the country, but in this interview she implicitely states that she actually had Czech rather than Mongolian characters in mind when writing the book, and I think this does shine out a bit.

The novel tells the fates of five women from one family: three sisters, the mother, and the daughter of one of the sisters. They seem to be originally from Bayanhongor, but three of them spend most of the book in Ulaanbaatar. The story is set in a kind of time hole, a strange mixture of socialism and late 1990s, extended to a period of 40-50 years, during which the sisters grow up, have children themselves, and become old. This setting is of course a rather obvious detour from history, on the other hand it makes the story more focused on the characters of the protagonists instead on outside events, and to me this worked.

There are some other detours from reality that IMO did not work so well or were just unnecessary, like that in real life, naadam races are for distinguished by the age of the horses, not of the riders. And there were some inconsistencies - more inconsistent than the average first person narrator, anyway - but this may be due to the translation. For example it is almost impossible not to conclude that the Nadaam in which Magi competes is in Ulaanbaatar. Two specific points of critique are the translations of "Kulturní dům" (Uulan Bulan in Mongolian) to "Kulturzentrum" - the proper socialist term here is Kulturhaus - and of whatever "bowl" means in Czech to "Lavoir" - many German readers will probably interpret this as another Mongolian term, not as Austrian for an ordinary "Schüssel". I also was not entirely convinced of the use of untranslated Mongolian words. I of course know what hüühdiin tsetserleg, nohoi, manjin etc. mean, but I don't see what is gained from not just writing kindergarten, dog, and so on. And furgons are called furgon in Mongolian, not kibitka (or is kibitka an untranslated czech word here)?

To cut the bitching, I actually liked the book. The characters were interesting, the text read well, and the book is far from being completely off. It may not be the great novel about Mongolia in the 1990s, but it definitely is a nice change from Weeping Camels and Yellow Dogs. Not that there is anything wrong with these, and without this franchise we might not have seen a translation of this work into German. Last not least the outer cover is quite a beauty, both for the material used and for the picture.

I don't expect this book to help my mother understand Mongolia - or, only in the sense that Franz Kafka's Great Wall stories help developing a basic understanding of China.* But worth reading it is.

Price: 9 Euro (cheaper if "used")
Rating: 4/5

* I actually always felt that Kafka's works helped me a lot in understanding the most important things about China. Not necessarily the Great Wall stories, but The Verdict, maybe also the Metamorphosis and The Castle, and others. My brother is now in Slovakia and he sais that Kafka goes a long way towards understanding that country, too!